Janice Gentle Gets Sexy (41 page)

'Jesus, Mary and all the Saints,' he said despai
ringly, 'if only something exciti
ng would happen . . .'

He said this to Leary, and Leary winked. He had been a doorman at Cork Lodge Hotel for thirty years. The wink was his 'big tip' wink. 'Maybe it's another woman you need?' he said, nodding down the bar towards the deft placidity of Deirdre. He winked again. Dermot poured him a large measure of whiskey, which Leary, obligingly, downed in one. So much for the profits, but what the hell. Maybe Dermot should go travelling, too. He had always said that he would. He might have gone with Declan and showed him how to do it properly. As a father should.

*

'Nihil
obstat
quominus
imprimatur'
said Janice. She leaned back in her chair, pointed a plump finger over the full-stop button, and brought it down on ta
rget. She had never enjoyed writi
ng a book so much, though it felt strange to have abandoned the comforting shadow of Dermot Poll in this, her final work, her
magnum
opus.
She put the very last chocolate brazil into her mouth and enjoyed it slowly. Well, Christine, she thought, this one is for you. It is the one you would have approved of most.
Blastanges
de
femmes?
Have done with ye . . .

She telephoned Rohanne, but Ms Bulbecker was out of town.

Coming back when, please?

A week. Message?

No, no message, but could Janice
Gentle
please have the address of Morgan Pfeiffer? Sure she could.

Then she picked up the telephone and dialled
the Oxfordshire number. 'Girls’
she said, 'I'm ready.'

Gretchen went into town and posted all the keys save her own off to London. Returning, taking her favourite walk for the last time, she waved at the distant farmer, who was pacing his froze
n fields. 'Sylvia Perth is dead’
she called.

‘I
know,' he called back. 'But just see how it burgeons again in the spring.'

And she felt a tear trickle down her cheek and freeze like a tiny diamond in her moustache.

*

'I told you,' said Erica von Hyatt sleepily, 'that we should have brought the cushions.'

'How was I to
know they'd be holding the Festi
val of Celtic Origins in the south?' said Gretchen O'Dowd, pulling the neck of her jumper up round her ears.

'I knew we wouldn't sleep in a hotel. I
knew
it. . .'

'Oh, shut up,' said Gretchen O'Dowd, surprised at how satisfying the suggestion was, and she turned her back, huddling closer to the ba
se of the brick pier for protecti
on.

'And
we didn't get a cabin to cross in.'

'They were full.'

'Why didn't you book in advance? You said you would book in advance. When I asked you, you said you
would
book
in
advance.
You insisted . . .'

'I know what I said, but there wasn't one to be had. That's why it took so long before I could get
any
booking. Anyway, we had Pullman seats.'

'Pushman, more like,' said Erica. 'Bolt upright all night with that crowd behind us on brown ale and pickle sandwiches and that painting of yours digging me in the ribs - I mean, fancy bringing that on holiday
..
.'

'We are not on holiday -'

'Too bloody true.'

'And I had to bring it because I had nowhere else to leave it, and it is mine, and it is the only thing I have that Sylvia Perth gave to me.'

'Even if you hate the sodding thing . . .'

'It was her gift to me . . . And I've asked you not to speak ill of the dead, please. Anyway, it's something for you to lie on. I haven't got anything.'

'You don't need any extra padding.'

'What?'

'This jumper is sodding itchy.' 'It's best angora wool mix.' 'It's given me a rash.'

Gretchen felt a faint stirring in her fist, shades of her father calling her back. 'Take it off, then.' 'Mean old cow.'

'Who?' The fist twitched more strongly.

'Psycho Perth.'

'Sylvia!'

'Bollocks.'

'Erica!'

'I'm cold.'

'Thought you were a child of the streets.' 'I am.'

'It's not even frosty. The wireless in the chip shop said it was the mildest February for years.'

'You said we'd sleep in beds in hotels.'

'We will tomorrow. We'll head for Skibbereen. There'll be plenty of room there.' 'Say you love me.'

'I love you,' said Gretchen O'Dowd, but the words rang hollowly round the darkness. 'And tell me a story.'

'Once upon a time’
began Gretchen O'Dowd, 'there was a beautiful princess imprisoned in a dark dungeon from which only a Green Knight could save her.'

Erica von Hyatt snorted. 'Pull the other one,' she said, and, wrapping the
Irish
Press
more tightly arou
nd her shoulders, she fell sweetl
y and delectably asleep.

At least, thought Gretchen O'Dowd as she closed her eyes tightly and wrapped her arms round herself, at least Sylvia used to hold on to me once in a while.

Janice looked in the freezer. There was little left - a packet of chocolate muffins, three take-'n'-bake rolls . . . The refrigerator was almost empty too - a little butter, a
little
potato mayonnaise, some cream cheese. In the cupboards it was the same - a packet of milk, scoured pots of lemon curd and jam, a tin that rattled with a few broken biscuits. And the Turkish delight was reduced to granular crumbs submerged in white icing. She stood back and surveyed
the debris with pleasure and sati
sfaction. Such perfect timing. And now, as soon as the news came through from Ireland she would deliver up the manuscript and . . . She shivered. The night was a cold one, she argued with herself, no reason
not
to shiver even if her kitchen was always warm. She took out the packet of muffins to defrost, and went, smiling, back into the living-room. The screen shone soft as underwater light and she resettled herself in front of it. She remembered that there were souls inside it who had to be released.

The creator is God, she said to herself, as she called up the tube-train travellers. You have been safe, protected, secure in my green cave but now I must free you to travel where you will -

The pinger went on the microwave, the muffins were done. God the creator was hungry. She rushed to the kitchen forgetting her protected souls. For the moment the warm, moist chocolate enticed. She ate contemplatively. She would render up nothing to Rohanne Bulbecker until she was sure of Dermot Poll. Wanting to trust was not the same as co
nvicti
on. And after Sylvia Perth's behaviour, Janice felt she had a right — no, a
duty
- to be wary. It was a good book. She knew it.
Quite
the right thing to bow out on. She would not change one sentence, phrase, word or letter of it. She hummed a troubadour's song.

My lady will not speak the word

That shines without her eyes

Yet may she sing it pure and clear

And save her lover's sighs
...

*

Rohanne looked behind her at the blue-white snow, virginal save for the slicing tracks she had made. The air promised a new fall soon and then these would be covered, the landscape once more returned to its unsullied state. She leaned on her suck and thought that not all things are so easily restored. Perhaps, she decided, there was a time to fail. She had missed it with Janice Gentle
, who, true to Rohanne's predicti
ons, had succumbed, for
whatever the reason, to the enti
cement of money. Rohanne had found no pleasure in her success, and of the whole episode perhaps that response in her was the most disturbing of all. She replaced her visor and pushed off from the mountain with all her strength, scoring the whiteness again with her skis. It was a wonderfully dangerous and slippery slope, just as dangerous, she suspected, as Janice's
...

'My wife,' he said, 'that's her down there with the cherryade and embroidery kit - well, I would not wish you to get me wrong.
..'

Erica shook her head. 'Not at all,' she said.

'But, well.
..'
- he shifted nearer - 'she does not. . . understand me. She does not. . . understand me at all. . .'

'Ah,' said Erica, moving a
little
closer across the bar. 'Surely not. And you such a dear and lovely man, too, Brian.'

'And I'll tell you something else about me
...'
He also leaned closer, and poured a sensible measure of Jameson into both their glasses. By gosh she was a picture. 'What's that now, Brian?'

He bent his mouth to her ear. So pretty, the little pink shell of it. 'My name is not Brian at all.'

'No?' she sa
id, sitti
ng back a little and giving him a look of perfe
ctly
delightful wonderment. 'You don't say. What is it, then?'

'It's Dermot,' he said. 'Dermot Poll.'

'Well, I never . . . You don't say,' she breathed, smiling with her glistening pink mouth.

'I do say. And I say something else, too.' 'What's that?'

Her laugh was like harebells.

'You have the loveliest ears, the loveliest eyes, the loveliest hair and the loveliest body I ever did see. Slender as a lily stalk. For I could never abide fat on a woman. Fat shows they're running to seed.' He directed his gaze down the bar towards Deirdre. 'If you see what I mean.' He raised his glass to Erica. 'You are like a pure, white light at the end of a tunnel of darkness.'

'Sweet of you,' said Erica, and she toddled down to the other end of the bar to tell Gretchen.

'You want the good news first or the bad news?'

Gretchen asked for the former.

'The good news is we've found Dermot Poll.'

'And the bad?'

'It's that slob at the other end of the bar.'

Janice sent one copy to the Pfeiffer Organization and one to Rohanne. As she went out to the post office, she could hear Mr Jones muttering to himself while his hearing-aid whistled plaintively. She no longer feared him. 'Good morning, Mr Jones,' she said to his kneeling back view, but he did not hear. He was dealing with the lift. She peered into the compartment and remembered the face that had lain there so livid in death. To be buried in Birmingham seemed a fitting bathos. Poor Sylvia, destined to lie no
t among the rural beauti
es of Oxfordshire but in the concrete shadows of manufacturing England. In a way she owed her everything — both the good and the bad — and she decided it would be perfe
ctly
fitting to dedicate this, her last, to the memory of Sylvia Perth, who had, despite Janice's ignorance, helped bring pleasure and literature to thousands. That, then, wa
s the final part of the rebus: ‘F
or my friend and betrayer, Sylvia Perth. Rest in peace . . .' For a moment she thought she could smell that aromatic smoke again, hear a hissing behind her. Perhaps Sylvia was not able to rest in peace. Janice smiled benignly behind her glasses. Perhaps she was actually turning in her grave
...

The old grocer looked out as she passed. There was a metal grille in his window now and the bubble-gum machine ha
d been smashed. 'They'll be putti
ng wooden pips in the jam again soon,' he said dolefully. 'You mark my words. Nowadays' - he looked up at the sky and shook his head - 'nowadays
everything's
up for grabs.'

'Well, I'm not,' said Janice firmly, and she pressed on towards the post office, the frosty February air whipping an unaccustomed colour into her cheeks. She paid the fee for express delivery, watched the packages consigned to a mail sack, and was glad to do so. It had been far too long in coming, this moment; she wanted to go full speed ahead from now on. With a lightness of step that she had not felt since that other February night, she made her way to the travel agent's to inquire about Ireland.

'Going for the Celtic Festival?' asked the man.

'No,' said Janice. 'Pilgrimage.'